Free Melissa Senate by Questions To Ask Before Marrying

to feel something, a familial connection, any sense of family whatsoever. But Sally Miller-Geller might well have been a stranger. Though, I supposed she was.

    It might have been easier to feel something if she looked like Eric Miller, but I couldn’t tell if she did or not. The few pictures we had of him—the ones my mother specifically saved for our “memory album”—showed a tall, rangy man with dark-brown hair in a sort of new-wave eighties cut, in either a fancy suit or jeans and a white button-down shirt. He had a narrow face, neither of which Stella and I had; we’d both inherited our mother’s heart-shaped face. Sally did have the narrow face, too. And frizzy dark hair, all one length to just below her chin, in the shape of a pyramid. She wore tortoiseshell glasses, which she kept adjusting. A nervous habit, I supposed. I wasn’t sure of her eye color. Hazel, maybe. Greenish-brownish. Nothing about her features reminded me of my father, what I remembered him looking like.

    She returned with the pitcher and topped off our glasses, which we’d hardly touched. Then she disappeared again and returned a moment later. “I don’t really see what I can tell you about your father. I haven’t seen or heard from him since before you were born.”

    She said that as though it was normal, as though that was the way families were. And since our paternal grandparents had died before we were born, that would make Eric and Sally all either had left of their nuclear family. How could they just never speak to each other again as though they weren’t family? I tried to imagine never speaking to Stella again. Though there were times I was thrilled we were on the outs, we both always knew that we’d get together come our birthdays and Thanksgiving and for the anniversary of our mother’s death.

    “You don’t mind staying in one room, do you?” Rory asked, coming in with our suitcases. He’d clearly showered; he now wore a white T-shirt and jeans. “As you can see, it’s a pretty small house. You guys can have my room, and I’ll sleep down here on the couch.”

    What? Since when were we staying the night? We couldn’t possibly.

    Stella opened her mouth to say something, but Sally, looking at her son with a murderous gleam, rushed to say, “Oh, I’m sure Ruby and Stella have reservations at some lovely hotel. Your room is hardly clean for company, anyway, Rory.”

    “Mom,” Rory said in a singsong. “It’s fine.”

    Stella’s hand flew to her mouth. “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked on a croak, then raced when Rory pointed down the hall.

    “Must have been something she ate,” I said. I was hardly going to announce Stella’s pregnancy and any-time-of-the-day morning sickness to Auntie.

    As sounds of Stella’s morning sickness or nerves or bad eggs came from down the hall, Sally said, voice clipped, “If she’s sick and you want to stay the night, you’re welcome to Rory’s room. I was just planning on a simple dinner, so…”

    “I’ll cook,” Rory said, smiling so expectantly at me that I didn’t have the heart to tell him I couldn’t wait to get out of his tiny house.

    “Great,” I said. “I don’t know if Stella will be able to eat, but I guess that’s what doggie bags are for.”

    And that was how—upon Sally’s departure to “freshen up” Rory’s room—we got on the subject of Marco, who I already missed, and how Rory always wanted to adopt a German shepherd from the pound. He thought German shepherds were dogs in their truest form.
     
    Stella emerged from the bathroom looking radiant. Had she been faking? To wrangle an invitation to stay? Even though Sally had made it clear that she wasn’t going to tell us anything? “So what’s your specialty?” Stella asked Rory, and off we went to the kitchen, which was twice the size of the living room.

    I’d always envied Stella’s ability to do that, to feel at home with anyone, anywhere. As a child, from my earliest